The Foundation and Organization of a Peripheral Monastery According to a Sixteenth-Century Source: Case Valaam

This chapter examines the early phases of a peripheral Orthodox monastery called Valaam as depicted in a text deriving from the 1550-1570s. “The Tale of the Monastery of Valaam” seems to have been lost and forgotten until the 1980s when it was discovered by historian Natalia Okhotina-Lind. This text includes a detailed description of the somewhat violent foundation of the monastery, supported by the archbishop of Novgorod, at the turn of the fifteenth century. Furthermore, it depicts the organization and the monastic rule of Valaam, and the internal struggles it faced during its early existence. The context for the production of the text was the contemporary consolidation of Muscovite power, reflected in and reinforced by the remarkably growing number of “domestic” saints. The author argues that “The Tale of the Monastery of Valaam” was an attempt to create a basis for a much-needed founder cult of Valaam when conventional hagiography was out of the question because of awkwardness and a lack of clarity concerning its foundation, founders and early phases. However, the development of the founder cult was halted when the area was annexed by Sweden at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the monastery was abandoned. The alleged founders of Valaam were officially venerated at an imperial level only in 1819, when the monastery – refounded a century earlier – was rapidly growing in prestige, wealth and fame. “The Tale of the Monastery of Valaam” offers a valuable glimpse of the challenges a peripheral, northern monastery had to deal with during the fifteenth and sixteenth century.